Author: Christine Wyrtzen

Job and Jehovah Rapha

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My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.  Job 42:5

The Egyptians wrote a medical book in 1552 B.C. called “Papyrus Ebers.”  Inside were prescriptions and incantations for all kinds of illnesses. Their remedy for hair loss was to apply the fat of a horse, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, a cat, a snake, and an ibex.  The drugs they mentioned might turn your stomach: lizard blood, swine teeth, putrid meat, and moisture from pig’s ears.  Aren’t you glad you live in this century?

Moses was alive in Egypt when this book was written. He probably saw some of these applications in the palace. Years later, he would live to experience God revealing Himself as Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals. God needed only His own power to bring about healing.

The Book of Job is 400 years older than Genesis, so I’m sure many of these primitive methods existed during Job’s suffering. We don’t know if Job’s wife encouraged him to try any of them.  

Job had always been a righteous man. He would arise early in the morning to offer sacrifices to God for himself and each of his children.  They were offered to prevent harm, not because harm existed.  It was Job’s way of ensuring his children’s well-being.  Job did all the right things, yet God permitted Satan to afflict him.  This, alone, proves that suffering isn’t always due to sin. 

Job also suffered from the spiritual interpretations of his three closest friends. Though they claimed to speak for God, they did not, eventually driving Job to take his case directly to God. At this point, his relationship with God became personal and intimate. Before this, sacrificing animals to interact with the Almighty had been largely impersonal by comparison.  We know that because of the testimony reflected in today’s scripture.  My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.  Job 42:5

To experience God as Jehovah-Rapha, the Healer, we often pay the price of discipleship to know Him more intimately. We are tested with bitter waters for a season, and though grievous, it is beneficial (in retrospect) because it drives us to the heart of God. This is the place where scriptures became personal.  This is the time when we feel we are connected to God in a life-saving way.  This is the season we won’t trade for anything – even though we’ll never want to repeat it.  Knowing God is our highest privilege and the deepest longing of our hearts.  

This scripture is also my testimony.  Only because of affliction did the props and idols fall away.  Only because of affliction did the eyes of my heart open to see what had been hidden.  

Sometimes, I saw You heal me when I was sick.  But mostly, You have healed my orphaned soul.  You are my Jehovah Rapha.  Praise Your name!  Amen

It’s Never a Formula!

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Having said these things, He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.  Then He anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.”  John 9:6-7

Each of us needs supernatural healing from God, whether physical healing, emotional healing, or perhaps even spiritual healing from something related to spiritual abuse. When we hear that someone else received it, we’re eager to listen to their story.  We want to know how it happened and when it happened.  As they tell us about it, we wonder if something in their story holds the secret to our own breakthrough.

But there is no formula.  Jesus never offered any nor did He conform to them.  He varied His methods of healing.  Once, Jesus put spit on a man’s eyes.  Another time, he just touched them, and the man could see.  In John 9, he put mud on another man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam, in the southeast corner of Jerusalem, to wash the mud off.  Why such a wide variety of methods? 

Here’s a thought.  If Jesus consistently sent blind men to the pool of Siloam to wash their eyes, every blind person would have attempted to travel to the ‘miracle pool.’  The grandeur of the tales about Siloam would have obscured the power of Jesus, and He would not share His glory with another.   The whole point of blind people receiving their sight was that they encountered Jesus Christ.

For any who is waiting on God, we know how tempted we are to work hard for our miracle.  We pray and read more, trying to uncover the secret of getting God to move on our behalf.  If such miracles depended on self-effort, we would all get our breakthrough sooner.  But on the other side of it, what would be our testimony?  “When I did this, the miracle happened.”  

Encounters with Jesus are happening all over the world at this very moment. He’s speaking to someone sitting at an airport gate, and another will feel His presence in the kitchen packing their child’s lunch.  You may sense a holy encounter when you see handwritten notes in your mother’s bible.  The Lord still changes bitter waters to sweet springs of Living Water.  

How I love this Charles Spurgeon quote:  

Do not call yourself Mara but remember the new name the Lord named you. Don’t be so ready to affix to yourself names of sad memorials; your griefs have tainted your memory.  Do not aid them to sting you. Call the well by another name.  Remember Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that heals both you and the waters. Record His mercy rather than the sorrows and thank the Most High God.

What About All The Promises?

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Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. Psalm 103:2-3

God is holy and cannot lie. He is good for every promise that He has made.  God can, and will, heal every infirmity.  It is a certainty.  

Yet, I haven’t seen Jehovah Rapha heal every time I’ve asked for it.  Have you?  Instead, I’ve discovered that sometimes He heals now, ahead of heaven, and that is glorious! But for the rest of our infirmities, healing awaits on the other side.  Living in the ‘not yet’ doesn’t nullify any promise.  As Wayne Watson sang so long ago ….  “Home free, eventually. At the ultimate healing, we will be home free.”  

There are other passages in the Psalms that can be confusing as well. In Psalm 91, God promises that ‘nothing will harm us, and no danger will come near our tent.’ Yet, eleven of Jesus’ disciples died as martyrs.  Five missionaries were speared by the Auca Indians in 1957.  The persecution of Christians, right now, is on the rise. How can we understand these verses amidst the disappointment our hearts feel when God withholds what we believe He has promised?  

My father fought in WWII in the European theatre.  Before leaving boot camp, he memorized all of Psalm 91.  On the front lines in France, in a fox hole, he recited the passage all night long as the bullets whizzed by and mortars exploded in close proximity.  He saw buddies next to him die and was shocked the following morning to discover that he was the only one in his company still alive.  Did God honor Psalm 91?  Yes.  Yet I’m sure there were other soldiers, also believers, who clung to Psalm 23 and other promises.  Some, like him, survived.  Some did not. 

We can know this about Jehovah Rapha.

  1. All promises will be fulfilled.  Some now.  All later.  
  2. We should ask boldly for God to move now because we never know if His answer will be an immediate ‘yes’. 
  3. If God has us in a time of waiting, He will give us the grace to be more than a conqueror, forging through the pain to glory. 

Jesus came to suffer, to be crushed, and to show us the path to glorification.  God’s promises were an umbrella over Jesus’ life.  Some intersected His daily life with the miraculous.  But everything else was perfectly fulfilled when He breathed His last and entered glory.  We follow in His footsteps to ask for, and witness stunning, miraculous events.  And we also follow in His footsteps to lean into His Father with childlike trust.  He will give us the grace to endure with hope, no feelings of betrayal marring our countenance. 

I trust You, even in the waiting. Amen  

It Is a Certainty We Can Count On

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Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps”. Psalm 135:6

Jehovah Rapha is our glorious healer.  He heals all things in eternity, but some He heals ahead of time. Beautiful stories are recorded for us in the Old Testament.  Naaman was healed when he dipped seven times in the Jordan river.  A young boy was raised from the dead when Elisha laid over his lifeless body.  The children of Israel were healed when they looked to the serpent on the pole.  King Hezekiah was healed from a terminal illness and given an additional fifteen years to live.  But just as many times, the righteous prayed for healing but weren’t granted it in their lifetime.  Like us, they held on to their glorious hope and found the fulfillment of God’s promise when they entered Abraham’s bosom.

When Jesus came, He spent much of His ministry healing people.  Blind people were given sight. Tumors disappeared.  The dead were raised.  Fevers left.  The lame, relegated to begging for a living, stood on their feet to begin a new life.  While His healing was widespread, He didn’t heal everyone either.  For those who were left lame, or with a thorn in the flesh like the Apostle Paul, hope was deferred, and God’s grace carried them to the end.

God is all powerful and can easily facilitate healing.  But healing is the exception.  Let’s face it.  We’re disappointed and continue to groan under the fall.  

When I was 29 years old, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  I begged God for her healing.  He didn’t grant it on this side of heaven.  In 2003, my father died of lung cancer. Again, I pleaded with God for healing and felt sure that He would extend my father’s life.  He didn’t.  I stood firm, waiting for this miracle, all the way to his last breath.  It didn’t happen.  

You have your stories too.  Perhaps you are in prayer, even today, for the healing of someone close to you.

God will fulfill every single promise He has made.  What do we do with Psalm 103:3?  “I will heal all of your diseases.”  We don’t run from it or misinterpret it.  We live in it and expect its fulfillment ~ but in context with the whole counsel of God’s Word.  More on that tomorrow. 

I’ve seen miracles.  And I’ve been disappointed, Lord.  Help me when I stumble over You.  Amen

Jehovah Rapha

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If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.  Exodus 15:26

As the Egyptian army bore down on the people of Israel, they fled all the way to the Red Sea.  Cornered at the water’s edge, it sure looked like they would be slaughtered but God parted the waters, and His people walked across safely.  As the Egyptian army pursued them, their army, including horses and chariots, weren’t so blessed.  The walls of water, held up by the mighty hand of God, were collapsed and they all drowned. Israel rejoiced, built an altar, and sang a song of victory to their God.  

What a difference three days would make though.  They traveled on into the Desert of Shur (on the heels of the greatest miracle they had ever experienced) and faced the first of many tests.  This one also involved water.  The people were extremely thirsty, and desperate.  Relieved to finally find water, their hopes were dashed when they discovered it was undrinkable.  They named the water Marah, which means bitter.  Moses turned to the Lord and God showed him a piece of wood.  He was instructed to throw the wood into the water, and it would sweeten it, changing the mineral properties to make it drinkable.  It was at this moment that God identified Himself as Jehovah-Rapha ~ the God who heals. 

God spoke and promised to spare His people from any of the diseases He had brought on the Egyptians in the form of the ten plagues.  But like many of the Old Testament promises to come, it was conditional.  They were to ‘diligently listen to the voice of God and do what was right in His eyes, to give ear to His commandments and keep His statutes.’   

Throughout scripture, God has made many promises regarding healing but, honestly, isn’t this a tricky subject?  Sometimes Jehovah Rapha heals when we stand in faith but sometimes, after vigorous seasons of prayer and fasting, He does not.  This tests our faith and often sets up private disappointments.  In the dark, where unspoken doubts fester, Satan loves to work and malign God’s character.  We might even feel we have to make excuses for God when we’ve announced to others that God has promised healing.  Our arguments sound rather hollow coming from a heart that suffers from unanswered questions.

This is the week to explore some of these topics. What can we believe God for?  How do we live find peace in the mystery of waiting?  How do we interpret scriptures about God healing our diseases?  And where does deferred hope intersect this topic? 

We belong to a powerful God who will make all things perfect.  It’s a promise.  Eden will be restored.  For now, we wrestle and trust.  We ask questions but not with a fist.  I’m glad you’re with me for such an important week.  

Jehovah Rapha, we stand together in faith and proclaim that You do all things well.  And on time.  Give us spiritual understanding beyond what we have at this moment.  We believe but help our unbelief.  Amen

I Know I’m Free, But . . .

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And you shall remember and thoughtfully consider that you were once a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.  Deuteronomy 15:15

Steve Brown, in his book A SCANDALOUS FREEDOM, tells this story.

Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market.  He noted a young, beautiful African American woman being auctioned off to the highest offer.  He bid on her and won. He could see the anger in the young woman’s eyes and could imagine what she was thinking, ‘Another white man will buy me, use me, and then discard me.’

As Lincoln walked off with his ‘property,’ he turned to the woman and said, ‘You’re free.’  

‘Yeah.  What does that mean?’ she replied.  

‘It means that you’re free,’ he said.   

‘Does it mean,’ the young woman said hesitantly, ‘that I can go wherever I want to go?’  

‘Yes, it means you are free, and you can go wherever you want to go.’

‘Then, sir,’ said the woman with tears in her eyes, ‘I think I’ll go with you.’

Though she had been declared free, and though she sensed that she could trust her rescuer, she would have the mindset of a slave for years to come.  It would take years for her to process the freedom she was granted.  She would struggle to understand respect.  She would think twice before going in a restaurant or into a store to purchase goods.  

So it is with sanctification.  We each come with the baggage of our stories.  At our spiritual birth, the Good News of the Gospel changed everything.  We were declared innocent because of the blood of Jesus.  We were adopted out of darkness.  Yet the vestiges of slavery still haunt us.  

Every day, God must work in the unseen parts of us—the places where we still question whether Jesus’s love is as unconditional as He says it is. We are skeptics and accusers of the One who loves perfectly. We are afraid of the dark and insist on walking alone, while not understanding that God goes with us around every corner and on every detour.  

Jehovah Mekaddishkem woos us to keep trusting and keep believing until every part of our scared hearts are won over by a Gospel that is ‘so good it must be true.’  

You sanctify me in all the messy places of my heart.  You untangle the webs that still hold me captive.  This doctrine is very personal, and I’m in awe of how you love me.  Amen

There’s Only One Who Can Do It

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We who have been made holy by Jesus, now have the same Father he has. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers. Hebrews 2:11

Behavior modification is something I can do myself.  No matter what my heart feels, I can rise above it and force myself to do the right thing.  That is not the case with sanctification. I can’t change what my heart wants.  

Sanctification is growing to have a heart more like Jesus.  I can do absolutely nothing to bring that about.  It’s a holy process generated by God.  

Think about it.  How can I possibly force myself to love someone I don’t love?  How can I make myself desire to make a personal sacrifice when it’s the last thing I want to do?  How can I delight in putting others first when I am overcome with my own needs?   I can’t.  I need a new heart.  God must change the one I have so that it will value what He values.  

Sanctification is also about having a mind transplant.  I can do nothing to bring this about, either.  It, too, is a holy process that God generates. 

Think about it.  I’m incapable of processing anything with kingdom logic.  I can’t guess what those concepts might be.  I am confined to my own head and to the logic I was born with.  Only God can facilitate a mind transplant, and He rewrites what I think through His Word.  It’s living and active and does spiritual surgery.

The only requirement to all of this is that I am willing to defer and stay teachable.  Over a lifetime, my inner landscape can be transformed by small acts of submission to Jehovah Mekaddishkem. To God be the glory!

Plain and simple.  I want Your heart.  I want Your mind.  I will not get off course.  Amen

New Image In The Mirror

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Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.  I Corinthians 15:49

God makes a life-long commitment to sanctify His children, changing the way we think, what we desire, and what we treasure.  Though we are new creations at the time of spiritual adoption, it takes time for that to fully take effect on the inside.  

Before the cross, we bore the image of fallen Adam.  After the cross, the image began to change in the mirror.  The outline of Jesus began to appear and as time progressed, that outline began to fill in. When we die, the picture will be completed as we gain our perfection.  Sanctification will be complete.  

For now, Jehovah Mekaddishkem re-parents us for the rest of our lives.  He is invested no matter how long it takes for us to understand what He’s teaching us.  He is not daunted by how wounded we are, how far we’re behind others our age. The truth is ~ there’s a lot to sanctify in each one of us.  Others who know us well can’t begin to see the extent of our flesh.  We can look pretty impressive on the outside.  

But on the inside, the place where God’s Spirit works, only one thing matters.  How much are we like Jesus?  Do we think like Him?  Do we love who He is?   Is there a longing to be more like Him?

If so, it will be easier to disown and renounce any vestige of things Jesus died for.  We won’t fight Him when He points to something dark and calls us away from it.  We won’t shun the Light and avoid what His Word exposes.  We’ll welcome it.  The payoff is becoming more like Him.

Even I can see a new person in the mirror.  My new heart has made its way to my eyes.  Amen

The Grace Behind The Title

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“For the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”            I Corinthians. 1:18

God’s love undergirds everything He does.  I must see His gracious nature in the work of sanctification or I will miss this ~ God loves me so much that He will keep saving me.  

If I only see the cross as what was necessary to make me a child of God, I will miss the loveliness of sanctification.  In today’s scripture, Paul was writing to believers.  When he spoke of  ‘’being saved’, he wasn’t talking about the moment salvation occurs.  He was referring to something else ~ ongoing salvation from sin.  Daily sanctification.

*Every single day, we will battle with our motives.  We need to remember the cross and ask God to save us from selfish desires and hidden intentions.

*Every single day, we battle with careless talk, anger, despair, and criticism.  We need to remember the cross and ask God to save us from our personal strongholds.

*Every single day, we want to embrace what is temporarily satisfying over what needs to be deferred until eternity.  We need to remember the cross and ask God to save us from self-gratification.

These comprise the daily battle.  This is the fight for faith.  Whatever I choose to neglect will become easier to avoid.  Neglect is like a cancer.  Neglect will metastasize.

Salvation is near me today.  The cross centered life is meant to be mine.  Jehovah Mekaddishkem graciously offers me daily salvation from the tempter, the liar, the strategic planner, the deceiver, and most of all – from myself and my own flesh.

  I get it, Lord.  Conviction and sanctification are priceless gifts.  Thank you.  Amen

Jehovah Mekaddishkem

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Consecrate yourselves there, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.  You shall keep My statues and perform them: I am the LORD who sanctifies you.  Leviticus 20:7-8

Harry Ironside, one of the first pastors of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, said… “A Christian is someone whose past has been altered.”  The resurrection power of Jesus that raised Him from the dead is making us new, in every way, on the inside.  

Jehovah is the God who sanctifies us. To sanctify is to become holy. God is slowly changing us to become like Jesus. Sanctification happens every single day if I yield to the process. I’m transformed in baby steps, and though I may not see massive changes in a week, the cumulative effect over a year should be enormous. In a decade, I shouldn’t resemble who I used to be. 

Here are some examples of what it may look like.  

  • If an angry mother raised me and I still tremble in the presence of anger, Christ’s resurrection power slowly delivers me from fear and makes me bold.  I am sanctified to be calm and prayerful through another’s rage.
  • If I was raised to be someone else’s puppet and never had a thought or dream of my own, Christ’s resurrection power frees me from the control of others. I am sanctified to follow Christ and embrace His plans for me.
  • If I was criticized relentlessly for almost everything I did and still feel a crippling fear of doing something wrong, Christ’s resurrection power delivers me from playing it safe.  I am sanctified to become a Joshua who goes forward in confidence to conquer spiritual mountains.

You and I have been set apart from this world to be different.  We have each been singled out.  Jehovah Mekaddishkem picked us long before we were born.  We have great faith in the transforming power of Christ.  We thrill at every Word He speaks.  We tremble at the presence of the Holy Spirit.  We run out of the grave to new life.  

It takes a lifetime, though, for the grave clothes of the flesh to be unwrapped.  Daily, we die to ourselves and cling to new life in Christ.  As we do, we become more peculiar.  We live as aliens and strangers.  As I’m writing this, I’m aware that we are a family of daughters who know the pain and the exhilaration of the sanctification process.  Every sacrifice is worth it, and we cheer each other on to the finish line.   

Only true disciples can celebrate this name of God.  We’ve yielded to the Potter and seen His glory revealed in us.  

Thank you for choosing us and for patiently working with us. Amen